We are committed to eliminating discrimination and encouraging diversity amongst our cohort and the wider education profession.
We are:
- committed to inclusion, diversity, and equality in all we do – and all interactions with employees, cohorts, and trustees.
- committed to recognising, supporting, and valuing the diversity of our employees in the workplace.
- committed to eliminating discrimination and encouraging diversity amongst our cohort.
- committed to providing an environment free from discrimination, bullying, harassment, or victimisation, where all members of our community are treated with respect and dignity.
Our Equality & Diversity policy outlines the way we ensure we live by those commitments and what our team should do if they identify that is not happening. Equality and fairness are central to the development of our policies and practices and we will address discrimination, encourage understanding and promote equality of opportunity.
Like many organisations, we've spent the past few years reflecting on our practice. In 2020, we undertook several commitments to ensure we proactively consider our support for diversity as well as keep open the conversation, self-reflection and aspiration to improve. Since then we have:
1. Reviewed internal processes
including team recruitment, speaker and cohort events and governing structures – to ensure we uphold values in which we can take pride. In recent years we have reviewed our job packs, hiring processes and recruitment channels to help with this, as well as widening our pool of speakers. Our employee assistance programme and wellbeing champions offer inclusive benefits such as mental health and wellbeing support. We are continually reviewing our process and policies to ensure we create an environment that welcomes and supports a diverse workforce.
2. Reviewed our Now Teacher recruitment and marketing
to ensure we are doing all we can to diversify the teaching population, including introducing name-blind recruitment and ensuring greater diversity in our marketing to reflect both our cohort and the students they work with. We exist to bring more diversity into classrooms, initially from an age and experience perspective, but increasingly we have brought more men and people from minority ethnic backgrounds into teaching too.
3. Rolled out EDI (Equity, Diversity and Inclusion) in education training
for our Cohort before they qualify. We work closely with our Cohort on issues of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, partnering with Mindful Equity, DiversEd others to deliver training and support.
4. Stretched our thinking
by creating a working group to review our EDI approaches. Since then we have run training and reflection sessions to embed a culture of inclusion and keep open a conversation and learning about diversity. All of our staff have completed unconscious bias training, and this is part of the onboarding process. We have also had training sessions with organisations such as Mindful Equity and DiversEd for both our team and our cohort to ensure we are fully conscious of the issues and stretch our thinking.
5. Improved the way we track and monitor
diversity across our internal and external practice so we can have regular points of reflection and assess our progress. We regularly survey our team to check how we’re doing and benchmark with other organisations to see where we can improve.